Gas charges set to rise throughout NSW

Business consumers and also householders might possibly see price rises of up to 17.5 % over the coming three years.

This news arrives off the back of recommendation by IPART, the New South Wales energy regulator. This price increase can fluctuate massively by customer, all depending on which supplier they are currently with.

A breakdown of the suggested gas price adjustments in the next 3 years are as follows:

Residential
• AGL Energy: 12.4 per cent
• Country Energy: 17.5 per cent
• Origin Energy: 17 per cent
• ActewAGL: 12.3 per cent

Business
• AGL Energy: per cent
• Country Energy: 16.4 per cent
• Origin Energy: 9.3 per cent
• ActewAGL: 13.6 per cent

Make It Cheaper says: "These suggested gas price changes have some real ups and downs. AGL business customers however, have struck some good fortune, whereas Country Energy residential customers have caught the sharp end of these increases. This is actually going to make it challenging for customers to truly understand the effect of these cost increases."

As ever, we recommend thinking about starting to be efficient and economical regarding the gas you use. Not to mention doing your research to determine if you can find cheaper gas deals on the market - remembering that some bundle dual fuel deals through a single supplier is probably not as good as two separate suppliers for you gas and electricity."

Energy Australia Smart Meters Leading to Customer Criticism

Smart meters are increasingly being set up in newly built or any renovated homes all over Energy Australia's incumbent supply area.

The modern electricity smart meters allow for a retailer to implement 'time of use' charging. 'Time of use' charging isn't something new in NSW, the majority of consumers usually are charged a Peak, Off Peak and Shoulder fee by suppliers. Nevertheless the way of measuring and tracking is fairly crude.

The previous 'dumb' meter has a simple time switch to measure the consumers use across different periods during the day. The only way to read the meter, or change the time structure, is for an engineer to go out and re-configure it.

The modern smart meters permit the complete period of use to be configured remotely and for the meter to be read remotely. As a result even though the 'time of use' periods might be predetermined today, they might very easily be altered in the foreseeable future to more accurately reflect the costs received by suppliers to supply consumers with electricity.

The issue NSW consumers tend to be dealing with, could be the peak time period (highest prices) that Energy Australia are enforcing on these consumers is across the time of day whenever a they use, (particularly a family) is likely to be highest - typically 2pm to 8pm.

Consumers are generally less than happy about this as they think they're being struck with significant prices hikes, and some are. Energy Australia on the other hand suggest that 70% of consumers using smart meters will end up paying less for their electricity than those on a flat rate - demonstrating that bad news travels much faster than good.

Energy Australia has now permitted consumers to choose among a 'time of use' charging structure and also a 'flat rate' set of prices. This could be a good choice for Energy Australia - there's a clear need to get consumers onboard, after that improve the amount of information available about the benefits of smart meters.

The benefits being:

•Cheaper rates

•More accurate billing

•Improve energy efficiency

Very easy to say but a little trickier to deliver to buyers who are merely worried about affording their power expenses.